Word: maudlinity
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...brilliant full-length portrait of a proletarian father who tries to reach his children but who cannot touch them without giving hurt. At the end, when his son asks his advice for the first time, the old man breaks down and cries. The scene might have been merely maudlin. Mills makes it still another moment of truth in an extraordinary film composed entirely of ordinary people...
Both tributes seem mannered, calculated, polished for technical effect. But then, Dorothy Parker accepted whole the two-faced myth of her time: at her most maudlin, she always tried to speak through her head rather than directly from her heart. That accounts for both her limitation and her fascination...
...story straight and as close to reality as possible: scenes showing the collapse of order, for instance, are based on the record of civilian be havior at Hiroshima, Dresden and other cities devastated during World War II. Sometimes, though, Watkins' passion for peace leads him into moments of maudlin melodramatics. At film's end, the sound track unconvincingly takes the press and television to task for supposedly refusing to discuss the possibilities of nuclear war, and asks: "Is there a real hope to be found in this silence?" And one scene of nuclear holocaust is accompanied...
...Your review of the Conniff-Considine-Jackie Kennedy love affair [March 24] neglected one thing: to name Considine the alltime top fan-magazine writer. If that series wasn't pure fan-book output, with its sappy descriptive reporting and maudlin handling, then this commentary deserves a Pulitzer Prize nomination at least...
Even a first-rate cast cannot help Millie from ultimately being thoroughly maudlin. Julie Andrews' star bright charm and prodigious energies cannot make a hit all by themselves, nor can Beatrice Lillie's still wonderful deadpan drolleries. Carol Channing, in a cameo role, only indicates that she is better as a living Dolly than as an overgrown Jazz Baby. The picture's basic problem, however, lies not with its talent but with its target. Satire is never any stronger than the host it feeds upon; by lampooning an overdone era, the creators of the film have made...